Porter Airlines Inc. is a Canadian, all-economy airline that serves customers free beer and wine in glassware. Is management nuts? That must cost a fortune.
It's a question I posed to Porter president Kevin Jackson, who is leading the quest to turn Porter from a scrappy, all-turboprop carrier, into a jet operator that flies to the top markets in North America. Surely, there must be opportunity for cost-cutting, right?
Jackson says no — that people choose Porter for its all-inclusive product.
"You can have so many conversations internally and ask, 'is it this attribute that is the tipping point? Or is it this product?' You can chip your way down with the finance team and say, ‘what about this?’ That is a fool’s errand from our perspective. It's about the entire thing. It's the brand aesthetic. Free beer and wine served in glassware is a signature element of what we do. If I pulled it away, what would people think? We don't look at it that way. We finally — internally at headquarters — acknowledge that we're not going to chip away at that and then just become like everybody else."
Do you agree? Or would you be on the finance team begging Jackson to look again?
More in today's installment of The Airline Observer.
Vice President at Hyundai GLOVIS
1moKeep growing